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Set up Grafana CLI

You can configure Grafana CLI in two ways: using environment variables or through a configuration file.

  • Environment variables are ideal for CI environments and support a single context.
  • Configuration files can manage multiple contexts, making it easier to switch between different Grafana instances.

Use environment variables

Grafana CLI communicates with Grafana via its REST API, which requires authentication credentials.

At a minimum, set the URL of your Grafana instance and the organization ID:

Bash 
GRAFANA_SERVER='http://localhost:3000' GRAFANA_ORG_ID='1' grafanactl config check

Depending on your authentication method, you may also need to set:

To persist your configuration, consider creating a context.

A full list of supported environment variables is available in the reference documentation.

Define contexts

Contexts allow you to easily switch between multiple Grafana instances. By default, the CLI uses a context named default.

To configure the default context:

Bash 
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.server http://localhost:3000
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.org-id 1

# Authenticate with a service account token
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.token service-account-token

# Or use basic authentication
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.user admin
grafanactl config set contexts.default.grafana.password admin

You can define additional contexts in the same way:

Bash 
grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.server https://staging.grafana.example
grafanactl config set contexts.staging.grafana.org-id 1

Note

In these examples, default and staging are the names of the contexts.

Configuration file

Grafana CLI stores its configuration in a YAML file. The CLI determines the configuration file location in the following order:

  1. If the --config flag is provided, the specified file is used.
  2. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/grafanactl/config.yaml
  3. If $HOME is set: $HOME/.config/grafanactl/config.yaml
  4. If $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set: $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/grafanactl/config.yaml

Note

Use grafanactl config check to display the configuration file currently in use.

Useful commands

Check the current configuration:

Bash 
grafanactl config check

Note

This command is useful to troubleshoot your configuration.

List all available contexts:

Bash 
grafanactl config list-contexts

Switch to a specific context:

Bash 
grafanactl config use-context staging

View the full configuration:

Bash 
grafanactl config view